The industrial revolution was all about doing things smarter, faster, and more efficiently.
That wasn't Rube Goldberg's style.
Each year, a national contest is held in the late engineer/inventor/cartoonist's name, where the goal is to create a complex, convoluted contraption to perform a very simple task. Think the childhood game of 'mousetrap', with a bunch of physics, math, and engineering thrown in.
"It's putting, I don't know, 300 steps into a machine that changes a light bulb," explained Kay Pelletier, one member of the St. Olaf team that earned a spot in this year's National Rube Goldberg finals.
The St. Olaf crew spent 6 months and more than 3,000 hours designing and fabricating their machine, which takes more than three hundred steps to change that light bulb, but not in the way you'd think. The bulb is actually crushed by a brick, and then the energy from that bulb is used to light 150 LED lights, arranged on a board to spell out 'St. Olaf'.
In between, there are magnets, circuits, ball bearings, electric cars, pool balls and part of an ice auger to give the contraption that 'Minnesota' feeling. One physical, chemical, or mechanical event triggers another, then another... you get the picture. Accompanying the invention is a rolling narrative about a mad scientist's workshop, which helps tie together the project's loose ends.
Next weekend, 11 members of the team will pack up their Rube Goldberg machine and head for Purdue University, where they will compete mostly against teams from hard-core engineering schools. But instead of being intimidated, the Oles believe their broad liberal arts backgrounds will work to the team's advantage.
"We're able to think outside the box, not just math, engineering, a little bit of everything," Pelletier explained. "We like to say we're a little more well rounded. It works."
(Copyright 2009 by KARE. All Rights Reserved.)
